Hydraulic characterization of a pervious concrete for urban drains

ARRIONDO, RODRIGO N.; URTEAGA, RAÚL; BATTAGLIA, LAURA; KLER, PABLO A.

Congreso; III Brazil-Argentine Microfluidics Congress - VI Congreso de Microfluídica Argentina; 2022

The use of porous concrete for components of urban drainage systems is well known and hasgreat potential for the development of sustainable water management in cities with high levelsof water risk. The application of pervious concrete involves different constructive elements andstructures, such as retarders, floor grids, and permeable pavements, among others. Despitethat such elements have decades of use, there is still a lack of information about the hydraulicparameters that are necessary for the study of those phenomena that define the performanceof the permeable elements. Those phenomena are mainly pressure (gravity)–driven flow andcapillary suction, that usually require for their modelling the porosity, the Darcy permeability, andthe Washburn constant. The different sizes of capillary pores, their stochastic distribution, and theintricate interconnection topology confer a high difficulty when trying a reliable characterization.Consequently, in this work, permeability and capillary suction tests were performed for a particularporous concrete cylindrical specimen with a diameter of 9.8 cm and 10 cm high, and the results werecontrasted with parameters from drainage experiments available in the literature. Furthermore, acomputed tomography was performed on the specimen, and observations will be contrasted withthe measured parameters.